Thursday, 6 January 2011

Lara has been sleeping in her cot bed, without the cot rails for a couple of months now with much success. Until recently, I had protected her from falling out (which she did rarely after the first week) by piling up pillows and a folded-up duvet next to her bed. While it served the purpose, it looked awful and the bedding took up most of the floor space in Lara's room so it seemed fitting when we were offered the chance to review the Lindam Portable Bedrail from Jojo Maman Bebe .

I had been worrying about how to handle visits to parents and stays in hotels over the Christmas holidays now that Lara can no longer fit into a travel cot. Jojo Maman Bebe sell a couple of bed rails but we chose the Lindam Portable one because we knew we would be travelling a lot over the Christmas period so a portable bedrail sounded like it would solve a lot of our predicaments; I was hoping it would aid Lara's transition from cot to bed.

I found the Lindam Safe & Secure Soft Folding Bed Rail hard to assemble and gave up – Mr. B. had to step in. It's not that the instructions were difficult, more that I didn't possess the strength the push in the small metal buttons that connect the pieces together. This also meant that the rail was difficult to adjust to Lara's cot bed (it can fit mattresses from 76-100cm wide and 141-210cm in length). Once again Mr. B. stepped in.

The Lindam Bed Rail is made from a flexible, soft mesh fabric across the bulk of the rail and is surrounded with a blue, solid fabric. It certainly stops Lara from falling out because occasionally, if she stirs during the night, we find her pressed up against the fabric in random positions where you know she would have ended up on the floor otherwise. My worry is that Lara sees it in the same way as she did the rails on her cot – as something that restricts her freedom. One of the reasons why I moved Lara into a bed was because I felt she wanted to take responsibility for her own movements in her nursery. When we first moved her out of the cot, she would wake in the night and lie in the darkness (either screeching, or else chatting to herself). With the cot rail, Lara's initial reaction upon waking is to get OUT. In this respect, the bedrail has failed.

I also found the Lindam bed rail to be... well, anything other than portable! When presented with the choice of folding up the Lindam bed rail and attempting to press thos pesky metal buttons again so that it would fit into the car boot, OR to fold up the sheet of the Dream Tubes (also sold by Jojo Maman Bebe), I just couldn't face carrying around the bulky metal frame of the bed rail – the decision was easy!

One of the things I like about the Lindam Portable Bed Rail is that during the day, I can fold it right down and it rests close to the edge of Lara's bed. Once I think Lara is ready to sleep, I unfold it and click it into place (I'm normally wrong, and she's not ready). I was worried that it was going to require me to use both hands at a time to unlock and unfold the rail each time I needed to lift Lara out of bed, but thankfully, you can un-clip one side at a time but the clunk of the clip is loud so I have to make sure I put it into place before Lara falls asleep, so as not to wake her.

At £26, I think the Lindam Portable Bedrail from Jojo Maman Bebe is still good value, even though it hasn't been an enormous success for us – I'm still glad I tried it, and I may find that it becomes more useful as Lara gets older. Over the next few weeks I am thinking of removing the bed rail and seeing how Lara goes without any protection on the side of the bed... eeek.

About Me

Approaching motherhood the mellow way - with a positive, mental attitude
Mum to primary school superstar Lara (7) and whirlwind Holly (4). By day I build enterprise software, by night I blog about being a mummy, pampering and tech